Mindful of the future
by meldahlie
Summary: From Tatooine to Mustafar: a random collection of Prequel Trilogy one-shots.
1. Agri Corps

Agri Corps

An explanation leaves Anakin troubled and Obi-Wan amused. Innocent and fairly happy, post TPM.

~:~

It's hard to remember the things Anakin doesn't know, things the youngest crechling takes for granted.

It isn't hard to remember his inevitable reaction when he finds out.

"That's terrible!" Anakin cries, waves of anger bursting out from him as loudly as his voice in the hushed gardens of the Temple. A few birds flutter, startled, from the trees, and Obi-Wan hopes none of the Jedi Council are taking a noon-time walk in the gardens. Especially not Master Yoda.

"Anakin..." he says warningly, looking down at his young padawan.

It has the predictable result. Anakin says no more. He simply pouts, and emotion continues to bristle from him as fiercely as the stubble of his padawan hair cut. There is a very, very long silence, entirely different to the tranquillity of the rest of the gardens, in which it seems to Obi-Wan that every noise is Master Yoda coming around the corner to find young Kenobi once again struggling with his padawan. And then, finally, Anakin subsides. He puts his hands into his sleeves in imitation of Obi-Wan, takes a deep breath and looks back up.

"That doesn't seem … fair." A pause. "Master?" he adds, as if the magic word he so frequently forgets might change the matter.

The matter, this time, is the Agri Corps. An older Youngling, one whom Anakin had managed, if not quite to become friends with, but at least become acquainted with by constantly beating him at basic light saber training exercises, has not been assigned a Master. When his duelling partner was not to be found, Anakin asked for him, and the answer he received did not make sense to him. Obi-Wan's contemplative walk in the gardens was abruptly interrupted by a puzzled padawan – and then, the outburst.

Obi-Wan's explanation of what "gone to Agri Corps" meant sounds, to Anakin's ears, like slavery.

"Not everyone serves in the same way," Obi-Wan reasons patiently. "Does Jocasta Nu in the library do the same thing as Master Windu? Or the Healers?"

Anakin's pout threatens to return. He is making an effort – a rather obvious effort – to block a little of his outraged and unchanged opinions on the matter, but Obi-Wan can still see what the major problem is. The Agri Corps do not carry Anakin's dream of a light-sabre on their belts.

"The Agri Corps serves by growing our food," Obi-Wan urges. "Without them, we would all be hungry." He sighs, and changes course. Sometimes people convince Anakin, where logic and even dinner do not. "I was once Agri Corps, you know."

Another thing Anakin did not know. Another wave of emotion rolls through the peace of the gardens, and Anakin's blue eyes grow huge with surprise and concern. " _You_ were?"

It wasn't quite the result he wanted, but Obi-Wan accepts the best of it and nods. "Before Master Qui-Gon accepted me, I was Agri Corps," he says. A more detailed explanation can wait for a later date – or should, but Anakin cannot, apparently, ever help asking another question.

"Qui-Gon didn't want you _at once?"_

"He..." No. Obi-Wan stops. A more detailed explanation really can wait for a later date. "Not immediately," he says simply.

Master and padawan stand in silent thought for a moment, staring at the flowering shrub before them. It is a … Obi-Wan cannot remember. He hopes Anakin is not going to ask, although greenery has been quite an interest of his. It is an interest he would have shared with Qui-Gon, although Obi-Wan suspects it is only brought on by contrast to the barren desert of Tatooine, rather than through an affinity to the Living Force. In this un-affinity, he and Anakin are much alike. How many hours did Qui-Gon spend, trying to get his padawan even to remember the names of plants?

Suddenly, Obi-Wan chuckles. He had buried the hurt of being un-assigned in the joy of Qui-Gon's acceptance of him, but he has never before appreciated the humour of the situation.

"For a while, I was afraid Qui-Gon took me out of sympathy," he says, gesturing Anakin forwards that they might resume his contemplative walk together. "Now I see he probably did – sympathy for the plants!"

~~:~~


	2. The Anakin I knew?

The Anakin I knew?

"Of all the words of tongue or pen, the saddest are: it might have been." Post-Mustafar.

~:~

 _A/N: With my apologies to those hoping for non-angsty fic!_

~:~

He would have got them out of there.

 _There are too many of them!_

Too many wasn't possible

for the Anakin I knew.

 _Master!_

Who else did they expect to see,

but the Hero With No Fear?

He would have expected it himself,

the Anakin I knew.

He would have got them out of there,

I don't know how, no more than he.

But he would have got them out,

a raggle-taggle of Younglings at his heels.

Out of the Archives,

out of the Temple, out of all we trusted in

too much, that weighed us down.

It would have made him glad,

the fierce, fighting gladness

of the Anakin I knew.

And then he would have found a ship –

a whole ship, half a ship – he would have found it,

and he would have flown it,

broken, listing, as it might have been –

The pictures crowd so closely,

of the Anakin I knew.

And no blockade would hold him;

He would have found me,

found Yoda, no-one else.

The last three Jedi of the galaxy –

No doubt about his place on the Council then.

Even yet I hear the mocking quip,

Tossing his proud mane back with laughter:

"Standing room only on the Council now!"

(We would have had no chairs)

Oh, but he would have lectured us,

the Anakin I knew.

Do not give up!

Do not split up!

Find somewhere else! Begin again!

Because he had done it once,

he would have done again.

A new place, a new planet. And new droids –

Oh, those droids he would have built!

Scraps, junk, un-needed at the Temple –

how we would have heard their value then!

Nothing could stop him boasting,

the Anakin I knew.

So we would have, the three of us,

begun, begun again.

Yoda to teach, and he to love,

those Younglings he had saved

(Myself, I think, somewhere between)

It would have been –

it would have been –

if he had been –

the Anakin I knew.

~:~:~

 _A/N: This idea began as a prose one-shot of Obi-Wan, post-Mustafar, but resolved itself rather curiously into the structure of a passage from my favourite free-form translation of Aeschylus' "Agamemnon."_


	3. On the mend

On the mend

 _A/N: Missing moment, pre-AotC.  
_

~:~

Healer Tsi-Bo settled down in her chair in the Ward Station in the Healers' Ward of the Jedi Temple with a sigh. Three small crechlings with an infectious cough take a lot of looking after, especially when they all seem compelled to cough the moment one of the other two has fallen asleep.

Three of them! And when a disease gets into the creche, there will soon be more...

Tsi-Bo sighed again, and then reached for the data pad with the list of current patients. If there was a sudden influx of crechlings, they might well need to re-arrange the allocation of beds, double up some rooms, arrange an isolation gap if possible, before the entire Jedi Order was coughing and whooping. Some less ill patients might need to be sent back to their own rooms.

She began to tap out possible changes. The young padawan with the broken legs could go back to his rooms … the old Jedi knight with the Sha'anar flower poisoning likewise … and in the end room...?

Tsi-Bo scrolled down to see the names of the pair in the end room – and stopped. Of course. Who else would it have been?

Kenobi. And Skywalker.

She smiled. When Qui-gon Jinn had died, there had been sadness in the Healer's Ward. Tsi-Bo herself had gone and wept oh, quite, quite foolishly, in the little end room which the Healers had often joked needed to be renamed the Jinn-Kenobi ward. Qui-gon and his padawan had been in and out so frequently over the years, always one of them bringing the other and always the same introduction:

"He's sick." "I'm not!"

But her tears had indeed been foolish. For although there was no longer Qui-gon's gentle smile, some things don't change.

"He's sick." "I'm not!" It was the refrain of Kenobi and Skywalker too. The same frequent visits, the same lugging of one by the other, the same need for the healthy one to stay in too, lest they worry themselves sick about the other.

There was really only one difference. Tsi-Bo put down her data-pad and listened. With Jinn and Kenobi, you had needed to check on them to see if they were on the mend. With Kenobi and Skywalker, you only had to listen.

" _...what did you expect, jumping into a nest of gundarks?"_

" _YOU jumped into it, not me, Master!"_

Yes, they were on the mend again. They'd started bickering.

~:~:~:~


End file.
